Electronic Arts has filed a preemptive lawsuit against aircraft manufacturer Textron, hoping to invoke First Amendment laws and justify the use of real-life helicopters in Battlefield 3.

Three helicopters appear in the game -- the AH-1Z Viper, UH-1Y, and V-22 Osprey -- none of which were licensed by Textron's subsidiary Bell. EA was in talks with Textron to reach a resolution, but those talks broke down. The game publisher feels it shouldn't have to seek a license to use the likenesses of the vehicles, citing fair use.

Electronic Arts hopes to exploit last year's official ruling that videogames were protected by free speech laws. It has succeeded in the past, getting away with using college football players' likenesses without permission. EA asserts that the appearance of the vehicles do not constitute an endorsement by the maker, and that the helicopters are given no greater prominence than any other in-game vehicle, appearing simply for realism's sake.

I always love seeing big publishers in these lawsuits, knowing how quickly they'd jump on the other side of the argument if it was their property being used. Of course, I admit my respect for free speech in games has been soured lately, given the hypocrites who won the ruling. Ah, sweet cynicism.

timeline following:⇓ Battlefield 3

Electronic Arts' On the House program for Origin lets users download free games for a limited time and keep them. It is obviously a way to get the service installed on more computers, and it's EA so some people are going to c...more

This week's challenge is in Battlefield 3 in which I attempt to run over an enemy player whilst piloting an air vehicle. With so many other players ready to blow me out of the sky combined with my lack of piloting skills, this might be just beyond my grasp!
If you've got any ideas for future challenges you'd like me to have a go at, feel free to leave them in the comments!more

Remember when Battlefield 3 came out and all everyone was doing was impotently running helicopters into the ground? DICE wasn't happy with the its flying learning curve, according to Battlefield 4 creative director Lars Gust...more

DICE really loves dinosaurs. It's no more apparent than with their final downloadable content pack for Battlefield 3, End Game. Users have already found a number of Easter Eggs, such as the pterodactyl that's flying around o...more

End Game, the final downloadable content pack for Battlefield 3, is out today first to those that have Premium membership on the PlayStation 3. There's four new maps, a bunch of new vehicles, new modes, a new weapon, and mor...more

Battlefield 3's End Game downloadable content is almost here! Battlefield 3 Premium members on the PlayStation 3 get the content first this week on March 5. Then Premium users on PC and Xbox 360 get it on March 12. Non-premiu...more

If you've ever played Battlefield 3, rest assured that EA has tracked everything you've done online and turned you into a statistic -- a pretty cool statistic at that. According to a report from VentureBeat, every day EA coll...more

Building on what we recently saw of the End Game expansion for Battlefield 3, DICE has another batch of screenshots, this time focusing on the four new maps. "Size-wise, they are comparable to Caspian Border and Operation Fi...more

With the latest Battlefield 3 expansion pack dropping next month, DICE has a few screenshots to tide us over in the meantime. End Game, as you'll probably remember, is the one that introduces the Capture the Flag and Air Supe...more

Chalk this up to "it should have been in at launch," but you can now transfer items between characters in Destiny. The process isn't perfect though since it isn't in-game, but you can do it by way of the companion app or Bung...more

Bungie has unloaded patch 1.1.1 into the Destiny world, which has a number of weapon balance adjustments, in addition to a new reputation window, matchmaking for weekly Heroics, and a fix for the dreaded heavy ammo bug. ...more

If you were planning on getting or trying out Battlefield Hardline and happen to have an Xbox One and EA Access, then your monthly payments are about to pay off. Well, kind of.
EA announced that EA Access members will be abl...more